Paul A. Cantor > Quotes

“The difference between civil servants and private businessmen is that when a central planner makes a mistake, he is likely to disrupt the whole economy and not just a single business.”
― Paul A. Cantor, Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
― Paul A. Cantor, The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV

“As an immensely imaginative novelist, not as a philosopher writing a coherent essay, Cervantes embodied in his characters and narrators the most diverse thoughts and actions. So a given passage may present a particular viewpoint, which Cervantes may or may not have shared at one time or under certain circumstances, while the next passage may present another viewpoint, which, again, he may or may not have shared at one time or under certain circumstances. But what all of Cervantes's pages indubitably prove is that he understood many things; and that he could therefore envisage, even more than his ingenioso Don Quijote, many different ways of thinking and acting. So it is with libertarianism.”
― Paul A. Cantor, Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture

“Freedom is not the ability to act without any constraints whatsoever. Given the constraints under which all human beings operate, freedom is the ability to choose how to respond to them.”
― Paul A. Cantor, The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV